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REVERBERATIONS

By John Rockwell

Published: February 20, 2004

Earlier this month British and even American newspapers (including The New York Times) were abuzz with the news that Roddy Doyle, whom many count as Ireland's greatest living novelist, had attacked James Joyce, whom most count as Ireland's, and maybe modernism's, greatest novelist.

''People are always putting 'Ulysses' in the Top 10 books ever written, but I doubt that any of those people were really moved by it,'' Mr. Doyle was quoted as saying at a symposium on Joyce and Irish writing at Ireland House at New York University. The symposium was intended to celebrate Joyce's 122nd birthday, no less. Mr. Doyle reportedly added that ''Ulysses'' ''could have done with a good editor'' and that he had ''read three pages of 'Finnegans Wake' and it was a tragic waste of time.''

All of this caused great glee in Britain, especially among the tabloids, which love likening Irish literary spats to bar brawls. For me, though, as an admirer of both Joyce and Mr. Doyle, it caused some pain.

I finished ''Ulysses'' at 1:43 a.m. on Jan. 16, 1963; I know because I noted the date and time at the end, and how moved I was. For years I would intone Stephen Dedalus's peroration at the end of ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'': ''Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.'' I thought it Emersonian, but soon realized it was Wagnerian, too, Joyce having been a fervent Wagnerian.

As it happens, I own an original three-volume set of the complete Revue Wagnerienne, a Symbolist journal that appeared in Paris from 1885 to 1887 by Édouard Dujardin. In 1888 Dujardin published a stream-of-consciousness novel called ''Les Lauriers Sont Coupées'' (''The Laurel Trees Have Been Cut Down'') in direct emulation of Wagner's leitmotif technique as he understood it, transposed into prose. Joyce later claimed that ''Ulysses'' had been partly inspired by ''Les Lauriers Sont Coupées,'' which gave Dujardin, who had long since lapsed into obscurity, a late life as a lecturer all over Britain and the United States, telling how he had influenced Joyce.

More recently I intoned that uncreated conscience bit to a young Irish novelist friend to urge him on. Of course he knew it already, but he graciously professed to share my enthusiasm.

Not everyone leaped on Mr. Doyle, however, or leaped to Joyce's defense. A number of writers in more serious papers defended Mr. Doyle's right to bash an icon, and some Irish newspaper writers even conceded that they had always found Joyce rather a hard slog.

Never mind that Mr. Doyle's remarks seem to have been ripped out of context. The novelist Colum McCann, who along with Frank McCourt was part of the N.Y.U. symposium with Mr. Doyle, wrote in The Irish Times that Mr. Doyle had heaped praise on Joyce and ''Ulysses'' before making what those at the symposium perceived as lighthearted cracks about overworship.

According to Mr. McCann, Mr. Doyle also made a compelling, provocative argument linking the Jewishness of the novel's prosaic hero, Leopold Bloom, to contemporary Irish controversies about immigration. Ten years ago I interviewed Mr. Doyle at his Dublin home and found him forthright but nervous about the journalistic propensity to distort his opinions. I wonder what he thinks now. Mr. McCann cited a Seamus Heaney poem: ''Whatever you say, say nothing.''

Some of what Mr. Doyle said, even in the tabloid reports, seemed less controversial. He made fun of the latter-day Joyce industry, which is gearing up to a promotional frenzy before June 16, 2004, which will be the centenary of the day on which Leopold Bloom took his memorable journey through the streets of Dublin. For the anniversary, 10,000 people are expected on O'Connell Street for a meal of fried offal and mutton kidneys, all washed down with Guinness. ''They'll be serving Joyce Happy Meals next,'' Mr. Doyle joked at N.Y.U. ''ReJoyce 2004,'' as the centenary festival calls itself, also promises a music-and-light spectacular along the River Liffey.

We know, more or less, through the journalistic prism, what Mr. Doyle thinks. But what might Joyce have thought about all this? He wrote ''Ulysses'' in self-imposed exile in Trieste and Paris; Paris was also the home of Samuel Beckett, who wrote in French and English (not Irish; few Irish novelists have gone that far). Now, in the new Europe, Dublin bills itself, not without merit, as a mecca for hip young people. At least some Irish novelists, like Mr. Doyle, actually live there. Would Joyce be proud of his 10,000-person Happy Meal, or ashamed, or amused?

''The name Shakespeare in Britain is rather like the names Ford, Disney and Rockefeller in the United States,'' the literary critic Terry Eagleton wrote in The Nation. ''He is less an individual than an institution, less an artist than an apparatus. Shakespeare is a precious national treasure akin to Stonehenge or North Sea oil.''

A writer in The Independent of Ireland accused ReJoyce 2004 of turning Joyce into ''just another brand -- along with Guinness, Kerrygold, freckled redheads, the Chieftains and U2.''

All of which leaves Mr. Doyle and Joyce on the sidelines of a larger squabble about the elitist and populist approaches to honoring a national cultural heritage. Mr. Doyle is a wonderful writer, and he shows few signs of slowing down. He writes novels and children's books and screenplays and television scripts. His latest trilogy, still in the making, promises to expand the Irish experience onto an epic, magical canvas far grander in scale than his earlier trilogy, which made his reputation with its quirky, charming evocations of the fictional Dublin working-class neighborhood of Barrytown. That first trilogy was turned into three fine films: ''The Commitments,'' ''The Snapper'' and ''The Van.'' If Joyce was Wagner, Mr. Doyle is rock 'n' roll.

In its report of the N.Y.U. teapot-tempest, The Guardian of London duly noted that amazon.co.uk has sold 97,107 copies of Mr. Doyle's ''Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha,'' which won the Booker Prize in 1993, compared with 2,374 copies of ''Ulysses.'' To be sure, ''Ulysses'' sold a few copies in bookstores before online ordering existed. Like the one I devoured back in 1963.

Joyce has earned his place in the literary firmament: a star called James, one might say, to echo Mr. Doyle's most recently published novel, ''A Star Called Henry.'' Joyce can suffer attacks now, even jocular and admiring ones as Mr. Doyle's apparently was. After all, there have been major writers (Tolstoy, Shaw) who had little use for Shakespeare. If Joyce created the conscience of his race, Mr. Doyle is honorably expanding it. He makes us consider it anew with his every book and every utterance.

Photo: The Irish novelist Roddy Doyle, whose recent remarks at New York University about James Joyce's writing have stirred up the teacup. (Photo by Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times)